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FIRST  ANNUAL  SHAKESPEARE  LECTURE 


What  to  expect  of  Shakespeare 


By 
J.  J.  Jusserand 


New  York 
Oxford  University  Press,  American  Branch 

35  West  32nd  Street 
London:  Henry  Frowde 


THE  BRITISH  ACADEMY 


FIRST  ANNUAL  SHAKESPEARE  LECTURE 


4  What  to  expect  of  Shakespeare 


By 
J.  J.  Jusserand 


New  York 
Oxford  University  Press,  American  Branch 

35  West  32nd  Street 
London :   Henry  Frowde 


Copyright  in  the  United  States  of  America 

by  the  Oxford  University  Press 

American  Branch 

1911 


FIRST   ANNUAL    SHAKESPEARE    LECTURE 


•WHAT  TO  EXPECT  OF  SHAKESPEARE' 

BY  J.  J.  JUSSERAND 

July   5,  1911 

IT  was  the  custom  in  former  days  that  any  one  who  addressed  the 
French  Academy  for  the  first  time  should  praise  the  great  Cardinal, 
founder  of  that  august  body,  and  should  compliment  the  king. 

If  similar  customs  prevailed  in  the  British  Academy,  nothing 
would  be  easier  for  me  than  to  comply  with  them.  I  should  have  to 
praise,  I  believe,  as  the  'begetter'  of  this  new  and  already  famous 
Assembly,  the  Royal  Society;  and  to  praise  it  as  it  deserves,  it  is 
enough  to  recall  that  it  numbered  among  its  Fellows,  in  its  early  days 
Newton,  in  its  latter  days  Darwin. 

No  less  easy  and  no  less  congenial  would  it  be  for  me  to  compli- 
ment that  Sailor-Prince,  who  reverently  walked,  a  few  days  ago,  to 
the  foot  of  the  altar  in  the  Abbey  where  so  many  of  his  ancestors 
sleep  their  last  sleep,  and  their  great  shades  still  keep  watch  over  the 
nation.  To  him,  the  worthy  inheritor  of  their  best  examples,  have 
been  handed  down,  with  the  crown,  the  traditions  of  a  father  whose 
ideal  was  peace  with  honour  and  with  justice,  and  of  a  grandmother 
to  whom  it  was  given  to  break  one  of  the  oldest  historical  traditions 
of  the  British  realm:  the  tradition  that  there  could  be  no  long 
English  reign  without  a  war  with  France.  Hers  was  the  first  excep- 
tion in  eight  centuries.  May  a  foreign  visitor  be  permitted  to 
express  the  wish  that  the  new  reign,  lasting  as  long  as  any  that  has 
gone  before,  shall  transform  the  exception  into  the  rule. 

Addressing  Queen  Elizabeth  in  a  year  that  is  now  famous,  the 
year  1564,  in  which  Shakespeare  was  born,  Ronsard,  speaking  in  the 
name  of  his  then  storm-ridden  country,  expressed  that  faith  in  its 


228537 


*  FIRST  ANNUAL  SHAKESPEARE  LECTURE 

future  which,  at  no  period,  has  any  French  heart  ever  lost,  adding 
that  if  it  were  possible  to  once  join  in  a  firm  amity, 

4  Vostre  Angleterre  avecques  nostre  France,' 

the  Golden  Age  would  return.  If  the  Golden  Age  has  not  quite 
returned  up  to  now,  the  cause  is  perhaps  that  the  experiment  has  not 
yet  been  continued  long  enough.  May  it  be  long  continued! 

The  theme  assigned  me  by  you  is  one  which  not  even  the  boldest 
minds,  the  best  informed,  the  most  accessible  to  poetical  beauty,  dare 
approach  without  awe.  Encouragement  may,  however,  be  taken  from 
no  less  ardent  a  worshipper  of  the  Shakespearian  fame  than  Swin- 
burne. 'For  two  hundred  years  at  least,'  did  he  write,  'have  students 
of  every  kind  put  forth  in  every  sort  of  boat,  on  a  longer  or  a  shorter 
voyage  of  research  across  the  waters  of  that  unsounded  sea  (the  works 
of  Shakespeare).  From  the  paltriest  fishing  craft  to  such  majestic 
galleys  as  were  steered  by  Coleridge  and  by  Goethe,  each  division  of 
the  fleet  has  done  or  has  essayed  its  turn  of  work.' 

For  an  occasion  like  the  present  no  galley  could  be  too  great 
or  too  majestic.  If  it  pleased  you  to  select  the  merest  fishing  craft, 
the  reason  must  be  that,  to  come  to  you,  it  had  to  cross  the  ocean, 
and  this  doubtless  humoured  the  fancy  of  a  sporting  nation.  As 
soon,  however,  as  your  invitation  reached  me,  I  accepted  it,  thinking 
that  the  best  courtesy  was  not  to  discuss  but  to  obey,  and  considering 
that,  for  lack  of  better  motives,  my  coming  from  the  lands  further 
away  than  'vexed  Bermoothes'  was  an  homage  I  could  offer  which 
was  not  within  the  reach  of  many  of  my  betters. 


When  Ronsard  died  at  St.  Cosine,  near  Tours,  in  December,  1585, 
Shakespeare  being  then  twenty-one,  all  France  went  into  mourning; 
besides  the  ceremonies  at  St.  Cosme,  solemn  obsequies  were  celebrated 
at  Paris,  orations  were  delivered  in  French  and  in  Latin  by  Cardinal 
Duperron  and  others;  the  crowd  was  such  that  princes  and  magnates 
had  to  be  denied  admission  for  lack  of  space;  not  one  poet  of  note 
failed  to  express  his  sorrow  for  the  national  loss;  these  elegies  were 
collected  under  the  title  of  Le  Tombeau  de  Ronsard. 

On  April  25,  1616,  the  bell  of  Holy  Trinity  Church  at  Stratford 
tolled,  as  we  read  in  the  register,  for  'William  Shakespeare,  Gentle- 
man,' one  of  the  chief  men  of  the  town,  wealthy,  good  humoured, 


4  WHAT  TO  EXPECT  OF  SHAKESPEARE'      5 

benevoleut,  known  to  have  been  somebody  in  the  capital,  and  to  have 
written  very  successful  plays.  A  monument  was  raised  to  him  with 
a  florid  inscription,  such  as  is  often  granted  to  provincial  celebrities. 
It  was  in  fact  a  local  event.  'No  longer  mourn  for  me,'  the  poet 
had  written,  'when  I  am  dead,' 

Then  you  shall  hear  the  surly  sullen  bell 
Give  warning  to  the  world  that  I  am  fled 
From  this  vile  world. 

But  the  world  knew  nothing  of  it;  the  British  capital  paid  no  atten- 
tion to  it;  not  one  line  was  written  on  the  occasion,  no  poet  mourned 
the  event.  'At  the  passing  of  the  greatest  Elizabethan  the  Muse 
shed  not  one  tear.'  l  When  his  plays  were  collected  seven  years  after 
his  death,  they  were  preceded  by  a  few  eulogies,  the  authors  whereof 
extolled  his  merits,  but  they  went  much  beyond  what  they  really 
thought,  for  they  had  to  conform  to  the  rules  of  the  genre.  The 
friends  and  fellow  players  of  the  author,  who  had  edited  the  collection, 
apologetically  offered  'these  trifles'  to  two  noblemen  who  had  been 
pleased  to  think  them  'something  heretofore.'  A  second  edition  was 
only  wanted  nine  years  after  the  first,  and  a  third  only  thirty-one 
years  after  the  second. 

What  we  see  now  needs  no  description.  With  the  single  exception 
of  the  Bible,  no  book  has  been  in  the  same  space  of  time  the  subject 
of  such  close  studies  and  such  ardent  comments  as  the  collection  of 
'trifles'  first  given  to  the  world  by  Heminge  and  Condell  in  1623. 
During  the  first  five  years  of  the  present  century  twenty-seven  new 
editions  of  Shakespeare's  works  were  published;  princes  have  played 
in  his  tragedies  the  part  of  princes,  kings  have  tried  their  hands  at 
translating  his  works.  Some  of  his  dramas  have  been  played  in 
Japanese;  his  Julius  Caesar  has  been  performed  in  the  Roman  theatre 
at  Orange.  His  ideas,  his  sayings,  the  personages  to  whom  he  has 
given  life,  the  scenes  he  has  depicted,  have  become  familiar  to  all; 
men  born  at  the  Antipodes  will  catch  an  allusion  to  a  scene,  a 
character,  a  word  of  Shakespeare's.  By  the  middle  of  the  last  century 
the  British  Museum  counted  some  three  hundred  entries  under  the 
word  Shakespeare;  it  counts  now  more  than  five  thousand. 

A  responsibility  uncourted  and  unexpected  by  him  weighs  now  on 
the  poet.  Books,  like  their  authors,  have  their  biography.  They  live 
their  own  lives.  Some  behave  like  honourable  citizens  of  the  world 
of  thought,  do  good,  propagate  sound  views,  strengthen  heart  and 
courage,  assuage,  console,  improve  those  men  to  whose  hearths  they 

1  Munro,  The  Shakspere  Allusion  Book,  I.  xiv. 


6  FIRST  ANNUAL  SHAKESPEARE  LECTURE 

have  been  invited.  Others  corrupt  or  debase,  or  else  turn  minds 
towards  empty  frivolities.  In  proportion  to  their  fame,  and  to  the 
degree  of  their  perenniality  is  the  good  or  evil  that  they  do  from 
century  to  century,  eternal  benefactors  of  mankind  or  deathless  male- 
factors. Posted  on  the  road  followed  by  humanity,  they  help  or 
destroy  the  passers-by;  they  deserve  gratitude  eternal,  or  levy  the 
toll  of  some  of  our  life's  blood,  leaving  us  weaker;  highwaymen  or 
good  Samaritans.  Some  make  themselves  heard  at  once  and  continue 
to  be  listened  to  for  ever;  others  fill  the  ears  for  one  or  two  genera- 
tions, and  then  begin  an  endless  sleep;  or,  on  the  contrary,  long 
silent  or  misunderstood,  they  awake  from  their  torpor,  and  astonished 
mankind  discovers  with  surprise  long-concealed  treasures  like  those 
trodden  upon  by  the  unwary  visitor  of  unexplored  ruins.  No  works 
are  so  familiar  to  the  nations  of  the  world  as  those  of  Shakespeare 
to-day.  In  their  continued  and  increasing  existence  what  sort  of  life 
are  they  leading? 

In  the  course  of  ages,  while  praise  and  admiration  were  becoming 
boundless,  an  anxious  note  has  been  sounded  from  time  to  time,  the 
more  striking  that  it  came  from  admirers.  Two  examples  will  be 
enough  to  make  the  point  clear.  While  stating  that  'the  stream  of 
time,  which  is  continually  washing  the  dissoluble  fabrics  of  other 
poets,  passes  without  injury  by  the  adamant  of  Shakespeare/  Dr. 
Johnson,  who  wanted  his  very  dictionary  to  be  morally  useful  through 
the  examples  selected  by  him  for  each  word,  stated  that  Shakespeare's 
'first  defect  is  that  to  which  may  be  imputed  most  of  the  evils  in 
books  or  in  men.  He  sacrifices  virtue  to  convenience,  and  is  so  much 
more  careful  to  please  than  to  instruct  that  he  seems  to  write  without 
any  moral  purpose  ...  It  is  always  a  writer's  duty  to  make  the 
world  better.' 

Nearer  our  time,  another,  no  enemy  like  Tolstoi,  but  a  passionate 
admirer,  Emerson,  for  whom  Shakespeare  was  not  a  poet,  but  the 
poet,  the  *  representative '  poet,  wrote:  'And  now,  how  stands  the 
account  of  man  with  this  bard  and  benefactor,  when  in  solitude, 
shutting  our  ears  to  the  reverberations  of  his  fame,  we  seek  to  strike 
the  balance?  Solitude  has  austere  lessons.  .  .  .  He  converted  the 
elements,  which  waited  on  his  command,  into  entertainments.  He 
was  master  of  the  revels  to  mankind.  ...  As  long  as  the  question  is 
of  talent  and  mental  power,  the  world  of  men  has  not  his  equal  to 
show.  But  when  the  question  is  to  life,  and  its  materials,  and  its 
auxiliaries,  how  does  it  profit  me?  What  does  it  signify?  It  is  but 
a  Twelfth  Night,  or  Midsummer-Night's  Dream,  or  a  Winter  Eve- 
ning's Tale:  what  signifies  another  picture  more  or  less? ' 


4 WHAT  TO  EXPECT  OF  SHAKESPEARE'      7 

So  spoke  Emerson  in  one  of  those  Essays  which  Matthew  Arnold 
went  so  far  as  to  describe  as  'the  most  important  work  done  in 
English  prose  in  his  century.' 

What  is  it  then  that  we  possess?  What  can  we  expect  of  Shake- 
speare? Is  the  treasure  in  this  bewitching  garden  of  Hesperides 
mere  glitter,  or  is  it  real  gold?  Do  we  listen  to  the  seer  that  can 
solve  our  problems,  answer  our  doubts,  instruct  our  ignorance,  soften 
our  hearts,  brace  our  courage?  Or  does  the  great  book  whose  fame 
fills  the  world  offer  us  mere  revels,  vain  dreams  and  tales,  no  moral 
purpose,  virtue  sacrificed  to  convenience,  such  evanescent  food  as  was 
served  on  Prospero's  table  for  the  unworthy? 


II 

Shortly  after  he  had  reached  his  majority  Shakespeare  came  to 
London,  very  poor,  having  received  but  a  grammar-school  education, 
upheld  by  no  protectors.  The  son  of  a  tradesman,  he  reached  the 
huge  capital  where  one  of  his  Stratford  compatriots  was  established 
as  a  grocer,  another  as  a  printer.  For  some  years  he  disappears,  and 
when  we  hear  of  him  again  he  is  beginning  to  be  known  as  an 
author.  Having  come  to  the  city  with  no  trade  of  his  own,  he  had 
obviously  soon  discovered  that  he  was  better  fitted  to  write  plays 
than  to  sell  groceries,  and  to  compose  books  than  to  print  them. 
He  was  apparently  still  in  Stratford  in  1585-6;  six  years  later 
London  dramatists  are  feeling  jealous  of  the  new  play-mender  or 
maker,  five  years  after  that  he  is  a  wealthy  man,  and  purchases  New 
Place,  the  finest  house  in  Stratford,  built  by  its  most  famous  citizen, 
a  former  Lord  Mayor  of  London.  He  was  then  thirty-three. 
Promptitude  is  the  salient  trait  of  such  a  career.  When  he  died 
Shakespeare  left  thirty-seven  plays;  Racine  only  twelve. 

Literary  invention  has  been  the  subject  in  our  days  of  minute 
research  on  the  part  of  philosophers.  Paulhan  has  shown  what 
different  roads  lead  to  that  supreme  result,  a  memorable  book  of 
lasting  fame.  One  road  passes  through  the  Elysian  fields,  another 
crosses  the  region  made  doleful  by  Tantalus,  Ixion,  and  Sisyphus's 
ceaseless  groans.  For  that  modern  dramatist  Dumas  fils  the  labour 
of  literary  composition  was  accompanied,  according  to  Binet  and 
Passy,  by  'a  great  feeling  of  pleasure.  While  he  writes  he  is  in  a 
better  humour,  he  eats,  drinks,  and  sleeps  more;  he  feels  a  kind  of 


8  FIRST  ANNUAL  SHAKESPEARE  LECTURE 

physical  enjoyment  through  the  exercising  of  a  physical  function 
.  .  .  Page  after  page  in  his  manuscripts  is  without  any  erasure.'  l 
Others,  like  Rousseau,  or  Flaubert,  had  a  different  tale  to  tell:  'My 
ideas,'  wrote  Rousseau,  'group  themselves  in  my  head  with  the  most 
incredible  difficulty :  they  move  about  obscurely,  they  ferment  to  the 
extent  of  upsetting  me  and  giving  me  heart-beats,  and  in  the  midst 
of  all  that  emotion  I  see  nothing  clearly;  I  could  not  write  a  single 
word,  I  must  wait.'  The  same  with  Flaubert:  'I  am  in  a  rage 
without  knowing  why:  my  novel,  maybe,  is  the  cause.  It  does  not 
come,  all  goes  wrong;  I  am  more  tired  than  if  I  had  mountains  to 
bear;  at  times  I  could  weep.  ...  I  have  spent  four  hours  without 
being  able  to  write  a  phrase.  .  .  .  Oh,  Art,  Art,  what  is  that  mad 
chimera  that  bites  our  heart,  and  why?' 

To  the  latter  group  most  decidedly  belongs  Shakespeare's  great 
rival,  Ben  Jonson.  One  must  'labour,'  said  he  sententiously;  one 
must  be  'laboured';  facility  is  the  most  dangerous  of  the  Will-o'-the- 
wisps;  it  leads  to  bogs  and  marshes;  do  not  follow  Jack-o'-lanterns, 
bright  as  may  be  the  lanterns;  retrace  your  steps,  'The  safest  is  to 
return  to  our  judgement  and  handle  over  again  those  things  the 
easiness  of  which  might  make  them  justly  suspected.' 

To  the  first  class  undoubtedly  belonged  Shakespeare.  The  number 
of  his  plays  and  the  brief  interval  between  the  composition  of  each, 
two  or  three  plays  a  year  being  his  average  production  during  the 
first  eight  years  of  his  authorship,  show  that  he  must  have  written 
with  the  'fine  frenzy'  attributed  by  his  own  Theseus  to  the  gifted 
ones,  flying  'an  eagle  flight,  bold  and  forth  on,'  like  the  poet  in  his 
own  Timon.  'My  manuscripts,'  said  Rousseau,  'are  scratched, 
blotted,  besmeared,  illegible,  testifying  to  the  trouble  they  have 
given  me.'  Of  Shakespeare,  as  is  well  known,  his  fellow  players,  who 
had  seen  him  at  work,  said :  '  What  he  thought  he  uttered  with  that 
easiness  that  we  have  scarce  received  from  him  a  blot  in  his  papers.' 
'He  never  blotted  out  a  line,'  grumbled  Jonson;  'would  he  had 
blotted  a  thousand!' 

But  he  had  other  ways,  and  rather  followed,  to  quote  him  again, 
his  own  'free  drift.'  Why  take  so  much  trouble,  when  what  he 
himself  expected  of  his  own  plays  could  be  reached  without  any  of 
those  Ixion-like  agonies  described  by  Rousseau  and  the  others?  For 
what  he  expected  was  simple  enough,  plain  enough,  and  near  at 
hand.  What  he  expected  he  did  actually  attain,  and  his  life  was  a 
successful  life.  His  eye  was  on  Stratford,  not  on  posterity.  His 

1  Annee  Psychologique,  1894,  I.  79,  SO. 


'WHAT  TO  EXPECT  OF  SHAKESPEARE'  9 

dream  was  to  end  his  days  a  well-to-do,  respected  citizen  in  his  native 
town,  and  that  dream  was  fulfilled.  The  idea  of  his  being  held  later 
the  Merlin  of  unborn  times,  the  revealer  of  the  unknown,  the  leader 
of  men  of  thought  and  feeling,  the  life-giver,  the  pride  of  his  country, 
never  occurred  to  him,  and  would  probably  have  made  him  laugh. 
His  allusions  to  literary  immortality  in  the  Sonnets  were  only  a  way 
of  speaking,  which  he  had  in  common  with  the  merest  sonnet 
scribblers,  as  was  well  shown  by  Sir  Sidney  Lee;  and  since  he  never 
printed  his,  he  cannot  have  cared  much  for  an  everlasting  fame  to  be 
secured  through  them.  For  his  poems  proper  he  took  some  trouble; 
he  published  them;  they  were  works  of  art;  for  his  plays,  a  secondary 
genre  in  the  common  estimation,  and  in  his,  he  took  none;  they  were 
things  of  no  import.  He  never  printed  any;  a  garbled  text  of  some 
of  the  best  was  given,  he  did  not  care;  silly  plays  were  published 
under  his  name,  he  did  not  protest;  he  left  no  authentic  text  in 
view  of  a  posterity  which  had  never  been  in  his  thoughts;  no  books 
are  mentioned  in  his  will. 


Ill 

Literary  fame  as  a  dramatist  troubled  him  not;  but  present  neces- 
sities could  not  be  forgotten;  chief  among  them  the  necessity  of 
pleasing  his  public.  His  average  public,  the  one  he  had  chiefly  in 
view,  whose  average  heart  and  mind  he  had  to  touch  and  delight,  was 
that  of  the  Globe,  a  large,  much-frequented  house  which  drew  popular 
audiences,  and  where  accidentally  some  Ambassador  might  appear;  but 
the  fate  of  the  play  would  depend  not  upon  the  Ambassador's  applause 
or  some  learned  critic's  blame,  but  on  the  impression  of  the  crowd :  a 
boisterous  crowd,  warm-hearted,  full-blooded,  of  unbounded  patriot- 
ism, a  lover  of  extremes,  now  relishing  the  sight  of  tortures,  now 
moved  at  the  death  of  a  fly,  a  lover  of  the  improbable,  of  unexpected 
changes,  of  coarse  buffooneries,  quibbles,  common  witticisms  easy  to 
understand,  of  loud  noises  of  any  sort,  bells,  trumpets,  cannon;  men, 
all  of  them,  of  an  encyclopaedic  ignorance. 

The  part  of  such  a  public,  as  a  contributor  to  Shakespeare's  plays, 
can  scarcely  be  over-estimated — a  real  contributor  to  whom  it  seems  at 
times  as  if  Shakespeare  had  passed  on  the  pen  to  scribble  as  it  pleased, 
or  the  chalk  to  draw  sketches  on  the  wall.  What  such  people  would 
like,  and  what  they  would  tolerate,  is  what  gave  those  plays  which  he 
never  thought  of  after  the  performance,  the  unique,  the  marvellous, 

F3 


10  FIRST  ANNUAL  SHAKESPEARE  LECTURE 

the  portentous  shape  in  which  we  find  them.  Great  is  the  de  facto 
responsibility  of  such  a  public;  great  that  of  Shakespeare  too  for 
having  never  denied  it  anything;  great  rather  would  that  have  been 
if  he  had  not  purposely  intended  to  please  only  those  living  men, 
assembled  in  his  theatre,  on  whom  his  own  fortune  depended;  'For 
we,*  even  Dr.  Johnson  had  to  acknowledge, 

For  we  that  live  to  please,  must  please  to  live. 

From  the  writing  of  his  plays,  however,  Shakespeare  expected  not 
one  thing  but  two;  first,  immediate  success  with  his  public,  and  all 
that  depended  on  it;  second,  the  pleasant,  happy,  delightful  satis- 
faction of  a  function  of  his  brain  duly  exercised.  This  for  us  is  the 
chief  thing,  what  saved  him  in  spite  of  himself:  to  the  coarse  food 
his  groundlings  wanted  he  added  the  ethereal  food  which  has  been 
for  ages  the  relish  of  the  greatest  in  mankind,  while  it  had  proved 
quite  acceptable  to  his  groundlings  too.  He  added  this  as  a  super- 
erogatory element  because  it  was  in  him  to  do  so,  because  it  gave 
him  no  more  trouble  than  to  put  in  quibbles,  jokes,  or  massacres, 
and  because  experience  had  shown  him  that,  while  it  was  not  at  all 
necessary  to  success,  it  did  not  hurt,  and  was  received  with  a  good 
grace.  It  was  for  him  the  exercise  of  a  natural  function,  as  it  is  for 
a  good  tree  to  produce  good  fruit. 

Hence  the  strange  nature  of  that  work,  touching  all  extremes,  the 
model  of  all  that  should  be  aimed  at,  and  of  much  that  should  be 
avoided;  of  actual  use  both  ways.  Prompt  writing,  as  he  had  no 
choice  (he  had  to  live),  the  courting  of  a  public  whose  acceptance  of  his 
work  was  indispensable,  explain,  with  his  prodigious,  heaven-bestowed 
genius,  how  the  best  and  the  worst  go  together  hand  in  hand  in  his 
plays,  those  flashes  of  a  light  that  will  never  fade,  and  those  concessions 
to  the  popular  taste  (indecencies,  brutalities,  mystifications,  tortures, 
coarse  jokes,  over- well-explained  complications),  or  the  advantage  so 
often  taken  by  him  of  the  fact  that  the  public  will  not  know,  will  not 
remember,  will  not  mind.  'He  omits,'  says  Dr.  Johnson,  'opportu- 
nities of  instructing  or  delighting  which  the  train  of  his  story  seems  to 
force  upon  him*:  the  reason  being  that,  in  some  cases,  such  opportuni- 
ties did  not  occur  to  him  at  once  arid  that  he  had  little  time  for  recon- 
sidering; given  his  public,  that  would  do.  Hence  also  his  anachronisms, 
his  faulty  geography,  his  indifference  to  real  facts,  so  complete  that 
he  would  not  have  stretched  out  his  hand  to  take  a  book  and  verify 
the  place  of  a  city  or  the  date  of  an  event,  nor  would  he  have  asked 
his  future  son-in-law  whether  a  human  being  that  has  been  smothered 
can  still  speak.  He  offers  to  his  groundlings,  and  not  to  this  learned 


'WHAT  TO  EXPECT  OF  SHAKESPEARE'  11 

age  of  which  he  never  thought  and  which  has  no  right  to  complain,  a 
reign  of  King  John  without '  Magna  Charta,'  but  with  plenty  of  gun- 
powder and  with  a  Duke  of  Austria  who  was  dead  before  the  play 
begins.  He  adopts,  for  convenience  sake,  two  rules  to  which  none  of 
his  hearers  could  be  tempted  to  object;  one  is,  that  all  antique  per- 
sonages having  lived  in  antiquity  are,  generally  speaking,  contem- 
poraries and  can  quote  one  another,  so  Hector  quotes  Aristotle, 
Menenius  talks  of  Alexander  and  of  Galen,  Titus  Lartius  compares 
Cor'olanus  to  Cato.  The  other  rule  is  that  all  distant  towns  are  by 
the  seaside.  Rome,  Florence,  Milan,  Mantua,  Padua,  Verona  (to  say 
nothing  of  Bohemia)  are  by  the  seaside.  His  personages  go  by  sea 
from  Padua  to  Pisa,  from  Verona  to  Milan;  about  to  start  from 
Verona  they  wait  for  the  tide.  Why  take  trouble?  He  wrote  only 
for  men  who  neither  knew  nor  cared,  composing  plays  not  meant  to 
survive  and  which  had  two  authors,  Shakespeare  and  the  motley  crew 
at  the  Globe. 


rv 

They  have  survived,  however;  their  hold  on  the  world  increases  as 
years  pass,  they  are  famous  in  regions  the  very  name  of  which  was 
unknown  to  their  author.  In  the  calm  of  our  study,  in  the  corner  of 
a  railway  carriage,  on  the  deck  of  a  ship,  we  open  the  book  and  read 
the  first  scene  of  any  play:  Prospero's  magic  works  on  us;  we  are  his, 
ready  to  follow  him  anywhere,  to  feel  and  believe  as  he  tells  us.  The 
sight  once  seen,  the  words  once  heard,  so  impress  themselves  on  our 
mind  that  the  mere  name  of  the  place,  of  the  man,  woman,  or  child 
cannot  be  pronounced  henceforth  without  the  grand  and  lovely  land- 
scape, the  loving,  hating,  laughing,  weeping  personage  from  the  plays, 
and  with  him  all  that  pertains  to  him,  his  family,  his  enemy,  his 
friend,  his  house,  his  dog,  appearing  to  us  in  as  vivid  a  light  as  if  he 
were  here  alive  again,  and  we  were  pacing  with  him  the  terraces  at 
Elsinore,  the  moonlit  garden  of  the  Capulets,  the  storm-ridden,  witch- 
haunted  heath  of  Lear  or  Macbeth,  the  woods  near  Athens,  the  forum 
at  Rome,  the  enchanted  park  for  an  enchantress  at  fielmont,  or 
the  real  battlefields  where,  in  bloody  conflict,  Prance  and  England 
were  shaping  their  destinies.  So  much  life,  such  arf  intensity  of 
realization  are  in  the  plays,  that  it  is  difficult  to  visit,  in  actual  life, 
any  of  those  places  which  Shakespeare  sometimes  merely  named  and 


12  FIRST  ANNUAL  SHAKESPEARE  LECTURE 

did  not  describe,  without  the  Shakespearian  hero  first  appearing  to  us, 
before  even  we  think  of  the  real  men  famous  there  in  times  past. 
Grand  or  sweet  figures,  lovers  whom  death  will  sweep  away,  or  leaders 
of  armies,  anxious  Hamlet,  scornful  Coriolanus,  loving  Romeo,  pensive 
Brutus,  irrepressible  Falstaff,  and  those  daffodils  of  man's  eternal 
spring — Portia,  Rosalind,  Ophelia,  Juliet,  Desdemona — rise  bewitch- 
ing, terrible,  or  laughable,  at  the  mere  sound  of  the  words  Elsinore, 
Eastcheap,  Arden,  Verona,  Cyprus.  So  long  as  the  mirage  lasts  our 
lives  seem  merged  into  theirs.  Between  the  true  artist  and  the  pro- 
duct of  his  brain  the  phenomenon  is  a  frequent  one,  but  between  the 
product  of  his  brain  and  the  readers  of  the  book  it  much  more  rarely 
happens:  'A  delightful  thing  it  is,'  said  Flaubert  in  one  of  his  rare 
happy  moods,  *  to  write,  to  be  no  longer  oneself,  but  to  move  through 
the  whole  creation  one  has  called  forth.  To-day,  for  example,  man 
and  woman  together,  lover  and  mistress  at  the  same  time,  I  have 
ridden  in  a  forest,  during  an  autumnal  afternoon,  under  yellow 
leaves;  and  I  was  the  horses,  the  leaves,  the  wind,  the  words  that 
were  said,  and  the  red  sun  that  caused  them  to  half  close  their  eye- 
lids bathed  in  love.'  This  privilege  of  the  author,  Shakespeare,  for 
better,  for  worse,  imparts  to  his  listener  or  reader. 

For  better  or  for  worse?  Some  of  his  worshippers,  thereby  courting 
protest  and  inviting  injustice  of  an  opposite  sort,  have  dogmatized  on 
his  perfections,  his  omniscience,  his  prescience,  the  safe  guidance  he 
offers  in  every  possible  trouble,  and  the  unimpeachable  solution  he 
propounds  for  every  difficulty. 

Wiser  it  is  perhaps  to  acknowledge  at  once,  with  due  deference  to 
the  purest  intentions,  that  it  is  not  exactly  so.  More  than  one  of  the 
gravest  questions  that,  from  the  beginning,  have  troubled  mankind 
would  be  put  in  vain  to  the  poet,  for  to  them  he  has  no  answer. 
What  he  does  is  to  place  the  problem  before  us  with  such  force  that 
he  obliges  us  to  think  seriously  of  those  serious  questions;  hence  of 
use,  though  of  a  different  use  than  is  sometimes  said. 

Concerning  religions  he  does  not  take  sides;  as  is  evidenced  by  the 
fact  that  discussions  are  still  renewed  now  and  then  (though  there 
is  little  room  for  doubt)  as  to  what  faith  he  belonged  to.  The  lesson 
he  gives  us  is,  however,  a  great  one;  it  was  a  rare  one  in  his  day; 
and  it  is  summed  up  in  the  word  'toleration.' 

No  problem  is  put  oftener  and  more  vividly  before  his  audience 
than  that  of  death  and  of  the  hereafter.  To  this  he  has  no  answer. 
In  their  calmest  moods  his  personages  hope  for  sleep :  '  Our  little  life 
is  rounded  with  a  sleep.'  Oftener  he  and  they  (he  in  the  sonnets, 
they  in  the  plays)  pore  over  the  prospect  of  physical  dissolution,  when 


•WHAT  TO  EXPECT  OF  SHAKESPEARE'  13 

the  time  shall  come  to  leave  'this  vile  world,  with  vilest  worms  to 
dwell.'  It  seems  as  if  for  him  as  an  author  the  apologue  of  the 
sparrow,  told  to  King  Eadwine  by  one  of  his  Northumbrian  chiefs, 
had  been  told  in  vain.  We  still  'go  we  know  not  where,'  and  no 
Isabella,  be  she  almost  a  nun,  and  bound  by  her  part  in  the  play  to  act 
as  a  consoler,  has  any  word  to  clear  her  brother's  doubts  or  ours. 
The  attitude  of  Shakespeare,  the  writer,  is  that  of  the  awe-inspiring 
genius  whom  Saint-Gaudens  seated  in  Rock  Creek  cemetery,  not  of 
the  one  who  carries  upwards,  from  earth  to  heaven,  the  sacred  flame 
of  life  in  Bartholome's  monument. 

As  a  patriot  his  teachings  are  mixed  ones.  Patriotism  has  two 
sides:  it  concerns  our  own  country  considered  in  itself,  then  our 
country  considered  in  relation  to  others.  The  first  kind  of  duty,  the 
most  natural  and  easiest,  is  admirably  fulfilled  by  the  warm-hearted, 
the  sound,  and  thorough  Englishman  that  the  poet  was,  justly  proud 
of  the  great  deeds  of  glorious  ancestors.  His  love  is  expressed  in 
admirable  lines  for  this  '  dear,  dear  land ' : — 

This  precious  stone  set  in  the  silver  sea, 

that  pale,  that  white-fac'd  shore 
Whose  foot  spurns  back  the  ocean's  roaring, 
And  coops  from  other  lands  her  islanders. 

As  to  the  other  side  of  patriotism,  Shakespeare  writes  not  only  as  a 
man  of  his  day,  but  as  a  man  who  had  to  echo  his  public's  feelings :  an 
echo  can  make  no  change.  To  understand  that,  to  picture  the  van- 
quished as  a  huge  crew  of  cowards,  traitors,  and  scoundrels,  afraid  of 
their  own  shadow,  was  not  to  increase  the  glory  of  a  victory,  proved 
beyond  tLe  reasoning  capacity  of  the  crowd  at  the  Globe.  The  poet 
allows  them  to  have  their  own  way,  to  hold  his  pen,  and  write  in  his 
plays  their  own  views  of  what  an  enemy  must  have  been.  They  were 
his  only  care;  unborn  posterity  and  exacting  critics  that  would  come 
to  life  long  after  the  plays  were  dead,  as  he  thought,  could  have  on 
him  no  influence. 

On  those  great  social  problems  which,  in  this  modern  world  of  ours, 
fill  so  much  space  in  the  thoughts  of  all,  Shakespeare  again  expresses 
himself  with  the  force  and  pregnancy  of  a  man  of  incomparable 
genius;  but  he  speaks  as  a  man  of  his  time  and  of  his  milieu ,  not 
as  a  man  above  them.  The  foibles  of  the  masses,  their  credulity, 
their  fickleness,  their  alternate  fits  of  enthusiasm  and  depression, 
their  aptitude  to  cruelty,  their  inability  to  understand,  are  depicted 
with  the  stern  accuracy  of  a  clear-eyed,  unfriendly  observer.  The 


14  FIRST  ANNUAL  SHAKESPEARE  LECTURE 

counterpart  of  such  vices,  or  the  extenuating  circumstances  resulting 
from  involuntary  ignorance,  hardship,  and  misery  are  scarcely  visible 
anywhere.  The  people,  throughout  the  plays,  are  the  same  people, 
with  the  same  faults,  be  they  the  Romans  of  Coriolanus  or  of  Caesar, 
or  the  English  of  Jack  Cade,  or  even  the  Danes  of  Hamlet  (with  their 
selection  of  Laertes  for  a  king) ;  they  are  the  people.  Shakespeare  no 
more  hesitates  to  offer  them  to  the  laugh  and  scorn  of  their  brethren 
in  the  pit,  than  to-day's  playwrights  hesitate  to  ask  a  middle-class 
audience  to  laugh  at  the  faults  and  folly  of  middle-class  personages. 
The  poet's  lesson  may  be  of  use  to  statesmen,  scarcely  to  the  people 
themselves,  since  for  a  useful  castigation  the  most  valuable  factor 
is  love. 

On  one  more  question  of  keen,  though  less  general,  interest,  we  would 
appeal  in  vain  to  Shakespeare  the  playwright;  that  is  for  information 
about  himself.  Few  men  (I  know  that  contrary  views  have  been 
eloquently  defended)  have  allowed  less  of  their  personality  to  appear 
in  works  dealing  so  directly  with  the  human  passions.  Shakespeare's 
personality  was  of  the  least  obtrusive;  except  in  Stratford  where  he 
wanted  to  be,  and  succeeded  in  being,  a  personage,  his  natural  dis- 
position was  to  keep  aloof.  This  general  tendency  is  revealed  by  all 
we  know  about  him.  In  an  age  and  a  milieu  of  quarrels,  fights, 
literary  and  other  disputes,  he  avoids  all  chances  of  coming  to  the 
front.  'His  works,'said  Dr.  Johnson, 'support  no  opinion  with  argu- 
ment, nor  supply  any  faction  with  invectives.'  The  exceedingly 
curious  discoveries  of  Prof.  Wallace  show  us  Shakespeare  unwittingly 
thrown  by  events  into  a  quarrel;  his  efforts  to  minimize  his  role  and 
to  withdraw  and  disappear  are  the  most  conspicuous  trait  in  the  new- 
found documents.  The  very  reverse  of  his  friend  Jonson,  who  courted 
quarrels  and  shouted  his  opinion  on  all  problems  and  all  people,  he 
carefully  avoided  every  cause  of  trouble.  As  we  know,  he  neither 
printed  his  dramas  nor  claimed  or  denied  the  authorship  of  any 
play;  no  writer  in  his  day  published  his  poems  without  laudatory 
lines  from  his  friends;  Shakespeare,  keeping  apart,  never  gave  or 
requested  any. 

On  rare  occasions  his  persistence  in  expressing  again  and  again 
certain  views  or  feelings,  or  the  casual  inappropriateness  of  his  per- 
sonages'say  ing  what  they  say,  leave  us  no  doubt  that  he  adored  music, 
loved  the  land  of  his  birth,  did  not  trust  the  mob,  knew  what  a  clas- 
sical play  was,  objected  to  child-players,  &c.  These  are  exceptional 
occasions.  The  change  we  notice  in  the  tone  of  his  plays,  as  years 
pass,  rather  follows  the  curve  of  human  life,  of  a  life  that  might 
be  almost  any  man's,  than  reveals  individual  peculiarities  in  their 


WHAT  TO  EXPECT  OF  SHAKESPEARE"  [15 

author.  One  of  his  chief  characteristics  (and  merits)  is,  on  the 
contrary,  the  free  play  he  allows  to  his  heroes'  personality,  and  his 
care  not  to  encumber  them  with  his  own.  They  go  forth,  fill  the 
stage,  fill  the  drama  with  their  explanations  and  apologies,  so  freely,  so 
unimpeded  by  the  author,  who  seems  simply  to  listen,  that  the  spec- 
tator will  at  times  remain  in  doubt  which  to  believe  and  which  to 
love.  They  pay  no  heed  to  Shakespeare,  and  they  expound  or  con- 
tradict their  maker's  opinion  without  even  knowing  which.  They  are 
created  independent  and  alive;  they  continue  so  to-day,  the  very 
reverse  of  so  many  characters  in  Hugo's  dramas,  mere  spokesmen 
of  the  poet  who  wanted  to  imitate  Shakespeare,  but  forgot  to  conceal, 
as  his  model  had  done,  his  own  figure  behind  the  scenes. 

The  Sonnets  confirm  these  views;  there  alone  Shakespeare's  per- 
sonality is,  in  a  large  measure,  bared  to  the  eye.  But  there  the 
personage  whose  turn  had  come  to  speak  was  William  Shakespeare, 
who  used  the  same  freedom  that  he  had  allowed  to  Shylock,  Hamlet, 
Henry  V,  or  Richard  III.  For  him  it  was  a  kind  of  safety-valve, 
giving  vent  to  sentiments  which  would  have  been  out  of  place  any- 
where else;  but  it  was  enough  for  him  to  have  put  them  down  in 
writing;  he  did  not  go  the  length  of  sending  the  sonnets  to  the 
press. 


Far  above  any  of  those  single  questions  rises  the  one  of  general 
import,  propounded  by  Dr.  Johnson,  Emerson,  and  others:  that  of 
the  moral  effect  of  the  plays  on  listeners  or  readers. 

During  the  whole  period  to  which  Shakespeare  belongs,  and  before 
his  day  too  and  long  after,  in  his  country  and  out  of  it,  most  men 
agreed  that  plays  must  moralize  and  improve  mankind.  They  have 
other  raisons  d'etre,  but  this  is  the  chief  one.  Tragedy  and 
comedy,  said  Ronsard,  are  above  all,  *  didascaliques  et  enseignantes.' 
Sir  Philip  Sidney  was  of  the  same  opinion.  The  true  poet,  said  Ben 
Jonson,  must  be  'able  to  inform  young  men  to  all  good  discipline, 
inflame  grown  men  to  all  great  virtues,  keep  old  men  in  their  best 
and  supreme  state,'  and  he  deplored  the  debasement  of  that  sacred 
role  among  his  contemporaries,  especially  in  dramatic  poetry. 
According  to  Corneille  the  chief  point  is  to  paint  virtue  and  vice  just 
as  they  are;  'and  then,'  said  he,  with  his  austere  optimism,  'virtue  is 
sure  to  win  all  hearts  even  in  misery,  and  vice  is  sure  to  be  hated  even 
triumphant.'  'The  stage,'  said  Racine,  'should  be  a  school  where 
virtue  would  be  taught  no  less  than  in  the  schools  of  philosophy.' 


16  FIRST  ANNUAL  SHAKESPEARE  LECTURE 

Samual  Johnson  wrote  his  ill-fated  Irene  to  show  (but  it  turned  out 
that  no  one  wanted  to  see)  'how  heaven  supports  the  virtuous  mind 
.  .  .  what  anguish  racks  the  guilty  breasts,'  and  'that  peace  from 
innocence  must  flow ' ;  while  Voltaire,  for  reasons  of  his  own  it  is  true, 
placed,  in  his  Babouc,  the  moralizing  influence  of  tragedies  far  above 
that  of  sermons. 

The  only  shackles  Shakespeare  was  loaded  with  were  the  needs  and 
tastes  of  his  public.  They  were  heavy  enough,  but  they  were  the  only 
ones.  The  absence  of  others  is  so  complete  and  so  unique  that  this 
characteristic  is  among  the  most  singular  offered  to  our  wonder  by  his 
works.  Barring  this  single  exception,  no  poet  cast  on  the  wide  world 
a  freer  and  clearer  gaze.  He  wrote  unhampered  by  traditions,  rules, 
religious  systems.  He  gave  himself  the  pleasure  of  showing  once  that 
he  knew  dramatic  rules  existed,  but  he  left  them  alone  because  they 
were  *  caviare  to  the  general,'  and  he  depended  on  '  the  general.'  They 
were  probably,  besides,  not  so  very  sweet  to  him  either.  The  final  re- 
sult is  that,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  he  stands  much  nearer  Aristotle 
than  many  of  Aristotle's  learned  followers.  The  great  philosopher 
did  nothing  but  sum  up  the  teachings  of  good  sense  and  adapt  them 
to  Greek  manners.  The  great  poet  did  nothing  but  follow  the  same 
teachings,  as  given  him  by  his  own  sound  nature,  and  adapt  them 
to  English  wants.  As  both  were  men  of  genius  and  both  were 
excellent  observers,  the  one  taught  and  the  other  acted  in  similar 
fashion. 

On  the  question  of  morality,  Aristotle  makes  it  quite  evident  that 
his  own  ideal  is  a  drama  in  which  vice  is  punished  or  even  has  no 
place;  but  he  clearly  states  also  that  the  rational  end  of  dramatic 
poetry  is  not  to  moralize  but  to  give  pleasure  (*(>"$  ytovjv). 

On  the  same  question,  as  on  that  of  '  rules '  (mere  suggestions,  not 
'rules'  in  Aristotle's  intentions),  Shakespeare's  attitude  was  the 
same.  He  would  not  go  out  of  his  way  either  to  secure  or  to  avoid 
an  ethical  conclusion  or  conformity  to  rules.  His  plays  were  truly 
written  *  without  any  moral  purpose,'  that  is,  instruction  was  not 
their  object.  But  to  conclude  that  they  do  not  therefore  instruct 
at  all  is  to  wander  from  truth.  First,  in  some  plays  the  events 
represented  are,  as  in  real  life,  so  full  of  meaning  that  the  moral  is 
no  less  obvious  than  in  any  classical  tragedy  with  a  confidant  or 
a  chorus  to  tell  us  what  to  think;  and  even,  at  times,  the  hero  tells 
us  that.  No  one  can  escape  the  lesson  to  be  drawn  from  the  fate 
of  Macbeth,  of  Coriolanus,  of  Antony,  of  poor  Falstaff  and  his  wild 
companions.  Augustus  in  Cinna  does  not  moralize  with  greater 
effect  on  his  past  than  does  Macbeth : 


WHAT  TO  EXPECT  OF  SHAKESPEARE'  17 

Better  be  with  the  dead 

Whom  we,  to  gain  our  place,  have  sent  to  peace, 
Than  on  the  torture  of  the  mind  to  lie 
In  restless  ecstasy. 

In  many  cases,  however,  it  seems  as  if  the  evil  power  so  often  at  play 
in  Greek  tragedies,  and  in  real' life  too,  were  leading  the  innocent  to 
their  destruction :  Othello,  Desdemona,  Hamlet,  as  worthy  of  pity  as 
Oedipus;  fatality  imposing  on  them  tasks  for  which  nature  has  not 
armed  them,  or  offering  them  temptations  to  which  they  would  not 
have  yielded  had  they  been  less  generous.  Are  those  plays  of  no 
moral  use,  or  is  their  use  limited  to  those  maxims  and  pregnant  say- 
ings which  Corneille  considered  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  a  tragedy's 
usefulness,  and  which  abound  in  Shakespeare — 

'Tis  time  to  fear  when  tyrants  seem  to  kiss. 

Great  men  may  jest  with  Saints;  'tis  wit  in  them, 
But  in  the  less,  foul  profanation — 

and  others  so  well  known  that  one  scarcely  dares  to  quote  them? 

One  instinct,  and  only  one,  appears  in  man  at  his  birth,  that  of  con- 
servation. The  child  eats,  sleeps,  does  what  care  for  his  growth 
commands,  and  can  no  more  think  of  anything  else  than  a  tree  can 
think  of  whether  its  roots  absorb  sap  that  ought  to  have  gone  to  the 
next  tree.  What  happens  later  is  of  immense  interest:  if  too  much 
of  that  native  instinct  persists  and  more  than  is  strictly  necessary  for 
preservation  survives,  then  the  misshapen  being  solidifies  into  a  low, 
mean,  dry-hearted  egoist.  To  call  him  with  Stirner  an  'egotheist' 
(Homo  sibi  Dens),  to  deify  the  monster,  is  only  to  make  him  more 
monstrous,  and  go  back  to  the  time  when  stones  were  deities.  Hearts 
must  open.  'The  aim,'  Lord  Morley  has  written  with  truth,  'both 
in  public  and  private  life,  is  to  secure  to  the  utmost  possible  extent 
the  victory  of  the  social  feeling  over  self-love,  or  Altruism  over 
Egoism.'  The  chief  influences  will  be  inherited  tendencies,  family 
tuition,  early  examples.  Next  to  that  will  be  what  and  whom  the 
growing  man  sees,  hears,  reads,  associates  with. 

For  compelling  hearts  to  expand,  and  making  us  feel  for  others 
than  ourselves,  for  breaking  the  crust  of  inborn  egoism,  Shake- 
speare has,  among  playwrights,  no  equal.  Here  works  that  supreme 
power  of  his:  to  bestow  life,  full  and  real  life,  on  whomsoever  he 
pleases,  to  delineate  character  with  so  great  a  perfection  that  such 
people  as  he  presents  to  us  we  know-  thoroughly,  and  what  happens 
to  them  strikes  us  the  more  since  they  are  of  our  acquaintance;  not 


18  j          FIRST  ANNUAL  SHAKESPEARE  LECTURE 

a  passing  acquaintance,  casually  made,  soon  forgotten,  but  that  of 
men  who  will  accompany  us  through  life,  ever  reappearing  on  the 
slightest  occasion  or  merest  allusion,  in  tears  or  smiles,  moving  us  at 
the  remembrance  of  a  happiness  and  of  disasters  in  which  we  take 
part  though  they  be  not  ours.  The  action  on  the  heart  is  the  more 
telling  that,  with  his  wide  sympathies,  the  poet  discovers  the  sacred 
'touch  of  nature*  not  only  in  great  heroes,  but  in  the  humblest  ones; 
not  only  in  ideal  heroines,  but  in  a  Shylock  whom  we  pity,  at  times, 
to  the  point  of  not  liking  so  completely  the  *  learned  Doctor  from 
Padua';  even  in  'the  poor  beetle  that  we  tread  upon,'  and  we  get 
thinking  of  its  pangs  'as  great  as  when  a  giant  dies.' 

The  fate  of  a  Hamlet,  an  Ophelia,  a  Desdemona,  an  Othello,  carries, 
to  be  sure,  no  concrete  moral  with  it;  the  noblest,  the  purest,  the 
most  generous,  sink  into  the  dark  abyss  after  agonizing  tortures,  and 
one  can  scarcely  imagine  what,  being  human,  they  should  have 
avoided  to  escape  their  misery.  Their  story  was  undoubtedly  written 
'without  any  moral  purpose,'  but  not  without  any  moral  effect.  It 
obliges  human  hearts  to  melt,  it  teaches  them  pity. 


VI 

Five  thousand  two  hundred  and  sixteen  entries  to-day  in  the 
British  Museum  under  the  word  Shakespeare  (more  than  double 
the  amount  for  Homer),  against  three  hundred  and  seven  in  1855; 
all  the  world  reading  Shakespeare:  moral  cannot  be  the  only 
attraction,  nor  even  the  chief  one.  It  is,  in  fact,  as  things  of  beauty 
that  the  works  of  the  poet  have  reached  their  immense  fame.  That 
they  are  things  of  beauty  is  now  admitted  by  all;  with  enthusiasm 
by  most  people,  unwittingly  by  the  rare  others.  Such  a  great  writer 
as  Tolstoi  denies  any  merit,  even  of  the  lowest  order,  to  Shakespeare, 
but  having  to  define,  in  his  book  On  Art,  the  tests  by  which  'real 
art'  is  to  be  distinguished  from  'vain  imitations,'  those  he  selects  fit 
the  works  of  Shakespeare  so  perfectly  that,  if  this  poet  had  been 
the  typical  one  he  had  in  view,  he  could  scarcely  have  written 
otherwise. 

Shakespeare's  plays  are  things  of  beauty,  works  of  art;  the  product 
of  an  art,  it  is  true,  which  cannot  be  learned  in  books — the  higher  for 
that.  What  is  then  the  use  of  a  thing  of  beauty,  an  As  You  Like  It, 
a  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  full  of  smiles?  and  all  that  gaiety,  and 
all  that  beauty,  and  all  those  passions,  and  that  force,  and  that  wit, 
and  that  eloquence,  and  that  wisdom  scattered  through  the  immense 


'WHAT  TO  EXPECT  OF  SHAKESPEARE'  19 

field  of  the  thirty-seven  plays?  *What  does  it  signify?'  What 
should  we  expect  of  a  thing  of  beauty? 

No  problem  has  been,  for  over  a  hundred  years,  more  passionately 
discussed.  Can  art  be  profitable  at  all?  Should  it  be  profitable? 
Should  it  profit  the  few  or  the  many?  Is  real  art  of  a  supra  terrestrial 
nature  or  not,  and  must  it  be  kept  above  the  reach  and  even  the 
gaze  of  the  lowly? 

On  these  questions  most  critics  have  known  no  doubts,  and  they 
have  answered  without  hesitation;  but  some  have  said,  Certainly  yes, 
and  others,  Certainly  no.  'Woe,'  wrote  d'Alembert,  'to  the  artistic 
productions  whose  beauty  is  only  for  artists.'  'Here,'  observed  the 
Goncourt  brothers,  'is  one  of  the  silliest  things  that  was  ever  said.' 
The  problem  continues  debated  and  debatable,  and  was  quite  recently 
the  subject  of  a  remarkable  essay  by  one  of  the  best  Shakespearian 
critics:  Poetry  for  Poetry's  Sake,  by  Professor  Bradley. 

In  the  course  of  the  last  century  the  quarrel  was  at  its  height,  and 
it  was  a  fierce  one.  For  a  time  no  vocabulary  had  words  strong 
enough  to  express  the  contempt,  the  hatred,  the  indignation  of  artists 
towards  those  unspeakable  bourgeois  who  could  imagine  that  art 
might  be  enjoyed  by  any  but  a  select  few,  and  could  be  of  any  use: 
'Everything  that  is  of  any  use  is  ugly,'  Thtophile  Gautier  had 
decreed.  The  true  artist  must  live  apart,  meditate,  never  teach, 
never  act:  action  might  spoil  the  fineness  of  his  perceptions.  He 
belongs  to  a  world  different  from  everybody  else's,  the  world  of  art. 

But  while  literary  wars  and  revolutions  were  going  on,  other  wars 
and  other  revolutions  were  taking  place  in  the  world  and  deeply 
influencing  art  theories.  The  revolution  of  1848  made  of  Baudelaire, 
that  staunch  champion  of  'art  for  art,'  a  convert  to  the  opposite 
doctrine:  'Art  is  henceforth  inseparable  from  usefulness  and  morality,' 
said  he,  burning  what  he  had  adored.  The  storm  of  1870  thinned 
yet  more  the  ranks  of  the  erstwhile  triumphant  partisans  of  supra- 
terrestrial  art.  No  doubt  was  possible,  Browning  was  right, 

The  world  and  life's  too  big  to  pass  for  a  dream. 

Since  the  din  and  dust  of  the  fight  have  abated  one  can  get  a 
clearer  vision  of  the  facts;  and  as  is  often  the  case  in  human  quarrels, 
one  now  discovers  valuable  truths,  though  in  different  proportions,  in 
the  doctrine  of  the  contending  parties. 

The  day  of  the  pure  dilettanti  saying  to  the  world, '  I  am  too  much 
above  thee  to  care  for  thee,'  l  is  decidedly  on  the  wane.  Boutroux, 
with  his  usual  acumen  and  sanity,  has  shown  that  their  views,  attitude, 
1  Cassagne*  L'Art  your  Fart,  p.  143. 


20  FIRST  ANNUAL  SHAKESPEARE  LECTURE 

and  success  had  never  been  a  sign  of  progress,  but  of  decay :  '  Jn  the 
epochs  usually  called  epochs  of  decadence  or  dissolution,  art  disdain- 
fully dissociates  itself  from  any  other  object  but  beauty,  considering 
that  the  latter  displays  its  full  power  only  when  free  from  all  acces- 
sory ends  such  as  utility,  truth,  honesty,  and  is  placed  alone  in 
its  supreme  independence  and  dignity.'  Art  is,  in  fact,  an  offspring 
of  nature;  it  is  of  course  in  close  alliance  with  beauty,  but  it  must 
not  be  cut  loose  from  the  soil  under  pretence  of  mere  beauty :  '  Each 
time  art  has  risen  again  from  decay  or  has  been  born  to  a  new  life,  it 
has  begun  by  casting  off  vain  ornaments  and  assigning  to  itself  a 
serious  and  real  end,  closely  connected  with  the  conditions  of  con- 
temporary life.' 

But  there  is  something  true  also  in  the  theory  of  '  art  for  art. '  If 
it  cannot  be  maintained  with  Hegel,  that  art  purifies  all  it  touches, 
and  that  any  kind  of  art  is  morally  beneficial  to  mankind,  it  must  be 
acknowledged  to-day  that  art,  when  not  wilfully  perverse,  is  useful 
simply  because  it  produces  things  of  beauty.  'All  that  is  great,' 
Goethe  said,  'contributes  to  our  education/  A  tragedy,  a  picture, 
a  statue;  Othello,  Rembrandt's  philosopher,  the  Victory  of  Samo- 
thrace,  raise  us  above  ourselves.  We  cannot  enjoy  works  of  art,  Paul 
Gaultier  has  observed,  without  'a  preliminary  forgetting  of  our 
habitual  preoccupations,  and  of  the  interested  views  which  form,  so 
to  say,  the  woof  of  our  lives.  .  .  .  They  free  us  from  the  tyranny  of 
interest.  .  .  .  The  emotion  caused  by  works  of  art  acts  like  a 
preface  to  moral  activity.'  The  same  author  adds  with  great  truth: 
'  The  morality  of  a  work  is  not  to  be  measured  by  the  morality  of  the 
things  represented,  but  by  that  of  the  sentiment  in  which  they  have 
been  represented.' 

The  influence  thus  exerted  will  be  powerful  and  beneficial,  in  pro- 
portion to  the  perfection  of  the  work,  the  depth  of  the  emotion,  and 
the  sincerity  of  the  artist  who  takes  his  starting-point  on  our  real 
earth,  allowing  himself  to  be  prompted  by  our  real  lives  and  our 
real  doubts  and  hopes.  The  influence  will  be  broad  in  proportion  to 
the  accessibility  of  the  beauty  represented.  Without  those  character- 
istics the  kind  of  art  that  may  grow  will  be  short-lived,  cold,  and  dry, 
the  cult  will  not  spread — few  will  worship  nowadays  a  wooden  idol. 

Of  the  former  sort  is  Shakespeare's  influence  on  mankind.  The 
world  is  full  of  beauty,  but  with  our  eyes  drawn  to  the  daily  task  most 
of  it  escapes  us.  We  want  the  poet,  the  musician,  the  artist,  to  touch 
us  with  his  wand  and  to  say  to  us,  Look.  Then  we  see  and  admire 
what  we  had  looked  at  a  hundred  times  before,  and  never  seen,  owing 
to  our  'muddy  vesture  of  decay.' 


WHAT  TO  EXPECT  OF  SHAKESPEARE  21 

A  sunset  may  pass  unobserved  by  the  vulgar;  it  will  less  easily 
pass  unobserved  when  arrested  in  its  evanescence  and  fixed  on  his 
canvas  by  Claude  Lorrain.  For  to  the  landscape  is  superadded 
Claude  Lorrain;  we  have  the  landscape  plus  he;  the  artist  changes 
nothing  in  what  he  sees,  but  he  is  present  there  with  us,  just  to  say, 
Look.  The  same  with  Shakespeare. 

No  sensible  man  visits  that  temple  devoted  to  artistic  beauty,  with 
its  innumerable  recesses  and  shrines,  where  all  epochs  and  all  countries 
are  represented,  the  Louvre  in  Paris,  without  leaving  it  a  better  man. 
The  added  worth  may  be  an  infinitesimal  worth,  it  may  be  a  con- 
siderable one;  in  all  cases  some  worth  will  be  acquired.  Dormant 
springs  of  disinterested  emotion  will  have  been  made  to  flow  again, 
a  fatigued  brain  will  have  been  rested;  sleepy  thoughts  will  have 
been  roused,  brought  back  to  life  and  made  to  engender  others.  The 
same  after  a  visit  to  Shakespeare. 

Private  benefactors,  or  the  State,  offer  to  studious  youths  the  means 
of  making  a  stay  in  Rome  or  Athens,  or  of  journeying  around  the 
world.  The  belief  is  that  they  will  return  stronger,  better  armed  for 
life,  having  had  unusual  occasions  to  think  and  consider,  to  store  their 
mind.  Such  journeys  are  offered  us  by  Shakespeare,  around  that 
microcosm,  so  full  of  wonders,  and  which  has  no  secret  for  him,  man's 
soul  and  character. 

'  His  hold  both  on  artists  and  on  the  masses  will  certainly  continue; 
on  artists  on  account  of  the  example  given  by  him  of  taking  one's 
stand  in  realities,  of  looking  at  things  straight,  of  observing  nature 
rather  than  conforming  to  accepted  traditions.  This  he  does  in 
absolute  simplicity,  without  any  touch  of  the  pedantry  of  either  the 
learned  writer  who  worships  rules  because  they  are  accepted,  or  the 
rebel  who  rejects  them  altogether,  and  on  all  occasions,  because  they 
are  rules. 

In  Claude  Lorrahrs  canvases  we  have  nature,  plus  Claude  Lorrain; 
in  Shakespeare's  plays  we  have  nature,  plus  Shakespeare,  plus  his 
public.  Discarding  what  is  not  his  but  has  been  contributed  by  his 
public,  we  find  that  what  he  adds  to  nature  does  not  consist  in  any 
undue  intrusion  of  his  personality,  but,  on  the  contrary,  in  artistically 
selecting  from  real  life  what  is  characteristic  of  the  individual  he 
represents.  One  might  follow,  step  by  step,  a  Hamlet,  a  nurse,  a 
Falstaff  in  real  life  and  note  every  word  they  say,  every  attitude  they 
take;  and  the  portrait  would  be  less  life-like  than  the  one  drawn  by 
Shakespeare.  There  are  moments  when  we  do  not  look  like  ourselves : 
such  moments  are  often  selected  by  photographers,  for  which  cause  so 
many  photographs  made  after  us  are  not  like  us.  The  true  artist 


"22  FIRST  ANNUAL  SHAKESPEARE  LECTURE 

is  more  discerning;  he  not  only  keeps  his  own  personality  apart  from 
that  of  his  personages,  but  in  that  of  his  personages  he  knows  how 
to  bring  out  what  makes  of  them  distinct  individuals.  That  is  his 
way  of  saying,  Look.  Boswell's  portrait  of  Dr.  Johnson  is  immortal 
simply  because  it  was  drawn  in  that  manner. 

As  a  trammel-breaker,  Shakespeare,  who  played  a  unique  role  in 
that  French  romantic  movement,  the  chief  result  of  which  was  the 
awakening  of  French  lyricism — Shakespeare  who  was,  said  Emerson, 
'the  father  of  German  literature' — will  continue  to  help  and  inspire 
future  generations  of  artists.  Every  successful  new  attempt  usually 
degenerates  into  a  school :  to  imitate  the  successful  is  ever  held  by  the 
many  as  the  shortest  road  to  success.  Old  rules  are  periodically 
scorned  and  discarded;  then,  after  a  brief  moment  of  independence, 
the  new  attempt  (invariably  made  in  the  name  of  nature)  is  systema- 
tized, and  new  rules,  new  shackles,  replace  the  former  ones;  barnacles 
retard  the  movement  of  the  ship. 

To  look  directly  at  nature;  to  see  how  Shakespeare  looks  at  nature, 
to  understand  the  amplitude  of  his  realism,  which  does  not,  under 
pretence  that  nettles  are  real,  discard  roses;  to  read  the  parts  of  his 
plays  which  are  really  his,  and  study,  for  example,  some  of  his  wonder- 
ful first  scenes  (Romeo,  Othello,  Hamlet,  Tempest,  &c.),  will  be,  on 
such  occasions,  the  best  of  cures.  Human  nature  will  have  to  change 
before  the  great  trammel-breaker  ceases  to  fulfil  his  mission. 

With  the  masses  an  increase  of  Shakespeare's  influence  is  to  be 
foreseen.  His  plays,  in  their  ensemble,  were  ever  accessible  to  the 
many,  since  it  was  for  them  especially  that  he  wrote,  but  the  higher 
beauties  in  his  works,  those  which  he  put  in  simply  because  he  could 
not  help  it,  because  they  were  commanded  by  his  nature  and  not 
because  they  were  required  by  that  of  his  hearers,  will  be  more  and 
more  understood  and  enjoyed. 

The  change  in  our  own  days  has  been  striking;  it  will  be  greater 
hereafter,  when  owing  to  discoveries,  to  the  improvement  of  machin- 
ery, to  a  change  in  the  conditions  of  life,  the  many  will  at  last  enjoy 
that  chief  one  among  the  great  causes  of  content  in  life,  which  the  few 
now  possess  and  the  masses  do  not — leisure  hours.  For  the  many,  as 
for  the  privileged  of  previous  times,  life  will  be  less  encumbered  with 
matter;  there  will  be,  in  their  day's  twenty-four  hours,  time  for  rest, 
for  study,  for  a  friendly  book,  for  thoughts.  Instruction  and  educa- 
tion, kindly  given  as  it  will  be  (else  of  little  advantage),  will  prepare 
them  for  the  best  use  to  be  made  of  the  new  treasure  with  highest 
enjoyment  and  profit.  Many,  of  course,  as  is  often  the  case  with  the 
possessors  of  treasure,  will  squander  theirs,  but  some  will  not,  and 


WHAT  TO  EXPECT  OF  SHAKESPEARE'      28 

their  number  will  probably  go  on  increasing.  One  of  those  highest 
enjoyments  will  be  a  better  understanding  of  beauty,  whether  natural 
or  artistic1,  a  real  sunset  or  a  painted  one. 

Signs  are  not  lacking  that  the  influence  for  good  of  things  of 
beauty,  as  such,  will  grow,  and  be  more  and  more  generally  taken  into 
account.  A  recent  incident  in  far-off  Colorado  may  be  quoted  as 
symptomatic.  A  commercial  company  there  wanted,  last  year,  to 
divert  to  its  uses  a  stream  which  formed  a  cascade  further  down;  it 
pleaded  that  it  had,  according  to  the  Constitution,  'the  right  to  divert 
waters  of  any  natural  stream  unappropriated  to  beneficial  uses.' 
Just  as  if  it  had  taken  its  cue  from  Portia,  the  United  States  Circuit 
Court  decided  that  '  The  world  delights  in  scenic  beauty.  ...  It  is 
therefore  held  that  the  maintenance  of  the  vegetation  in  Cascade 
Canyon  by  the  flow  and  seepage  and  mist  and  spray  of  the  stream 
and  its  falls,  as  it  passes  through  the  canyon,  is  a  beneficial  use  of 
such  waters  within  the  meaning  of  the  Constitution.'  Thus,  with  the 
full  support  of  public  opinion,  the  stream  was  saved  as  being  a  thing 
of  beauty,  an  honest  one,  and  therefore  beneficial. 

The  Palace  at  Versailles  has  been  transformed,  as  you  know,  into 
a  Museum  dedicated  'A  toutes  les  gloires  de  la  France.'  A  visit 
there  is  for  us  what  a  reading  of  Henry  V  is  for  you.  On  Sundays 
the  crowd  is  such  that  it  is  difficult  to  move:  a  crowd  of  the 
same  sort  that  filled  Shakespeare's  theatre:  artisans,  shopkeepers, 
soldiers,  sailors,  servants,  peasants  come  to  town,  and  there  too,  now 
and  then,  a  stray  Ambassador.  Such  people  are  the  best  public,  the 
most  sincere,  the  one  that  does  not  look  for  occasions  to  blame  and 
sneer,  but  occasions  to  admire,  and  few  things  are  more  beneficial 
than  disinterested  admiration  for  great  deeds  and  noble  sights. 
Leaving  the  palace  once,  at  the  hour  of  closure,  I  stood  near  a  couple 
of  obviously  very  poor  and  very  tired  people.  They  had  been  looking 
for  hours,  and  they  were  gazing  still.  'Now  you  must  go,'  repeated 
the  Keeper  for  the  second  time.  I  wish  I  could  render  the 
tone  and  expression  with  which  they  answered:  'Must  we  now? 
What  a  pity.  It  was  all  so  beautiful.'  Like  every  man  leaving  with 
regret  Shakespeare's  works  after  having  admired  what  is  highest  and 
truest  iiT  them,  those*two  surely  went  home  better  people. 

Let  us  not  expect  from  Shakespeare  what  he  cannot  give,  what  he 
can  is  enough,  and  is  of  peerless  value.  Having  come  young  to  town, 
hard  pressed  by  necessity,  writing  with  very  practical  ends  in  view, 
never  thinking  of  posterity,  bound  to  please  his  public,  the  means  of 
success  he  employed  were  in  a  way  forced  upon  him  by  circumstances. 


24  FIRST  ANNUAL  SHAKESPEARE  LECTURE 

He  knew  what  ingredients  his  public  liked,  and  never  felt  it  his  duty 
to  grudge  them  their  pleasure;  he  could  write,  and  had  to  write,  with 
extreme  rapidity,  without  any  preparatory  study  or  verifying;  and 
he  did  so  without  scruple.  But  no  less  fully  did  he  allow  free  play  to 
that  unparalleled  genius  of  his,  the  extent  of  which  was  unsuspected 
by  his  contemporaries  and  by  himself. 

By  the  problems  he  obliges  us  to  consider,  the  concrete  moral  of 
some  of  his  plays,  their  general  healthy  tone,  the  sympathies  he 
awakens  in  our  hearts,  the  amount  of  beauty  he  offers  to  our  gaze,  as 
varied  as  the  world  itself — by  all  this  he  renders  us  the  one  great 
service  of  drawing  us  out  of  our  paltry  selves,  of  busying  us,  not 
superficially,  but  intensely,  with  something  other  than  our  own  in- 
terests. He  raises  us  above  the  plane  of  everyday  thoughts,  he 
improves  us  by  fighting  in  us  the  ever-recurring  danger  of  our  native 
egoism. 

'How  does  it  profit  me?'  Emerson  had  said;  'what  does  it  signify? 
It  is  but  a  Twelfth  Night,  or  Midsummer-Night's  Dream,  or  a  Winter 
Evening's  Tale?'  Let  Emerson  answer  Emerson,  for  the  same 
thinker  had  said  elsewhere:  'All  high  beauty  has  a  moral  element 
init/ 


'TVERSIT 


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3° 


